Detecting and studying the extrasolar planets with amateur equipment

Hello group;
I want to present a new field of application: the photometric study of the
extrasolar planets with amateur equipment. Using a normal telescope and a
good CCD camera it is possible to show the dimming of the star due to the
transit of a giant planet in front of it. The planet I followed in the past
days is TrEs-2 a Jupiter like in the constellation of Draco, for 2 transit
in a row (26 and 31 July). The light curves, obtained with the differential
photometry technique, show clearly the transit, and I think there is the
possibility for a quantitative study of the planet.
The results with the light curves are visible on my homepage.
I hope this can be useful
Clear skies

--
Daniele Gasparri
Perugia (Italy)
www.danielegasparri.com

Daniele,

That is a nice piece of work. So, in theory, you could use the same
equipment to "discover" an extrasolar planet?

Fred

On Aug 3, 2:42 pm, "Daniele Gasparri"
wrote:
snip all
Nice site and images, Daniele. You are probably aware of Bruce Gary's
similar work on detecting exoplanets. If not, a url link follows:

http://brucegary.net/tutorial_exoplanet/x.htm

- Canopus56

ha scritto nel messaggio
ups.com...
Daniele,

That is a nice piece of work. So, in theory, you could use the same
equipment to "discover" an extrasolar planet?

Thank you Fred,
Yes, the same equipment can be used to discover new transiting planets; you
need just a little patience and luck.
But using this technique with newly discovered planets (for example with
radial velocity technique) , we get many other information, so the light
curve it's important both to discover and to study better already discovered
planets, and, most important, almost every amateur astronomer can do that:
you need just a CCD camera and a 20 cm telescope.


--
Daniele Gasparri
Perugia (Italy)
www.danielegasparri.com


Fred